Posts tagged “oil sands”

Different Situation Than Attempted Takeover of Unocal in 2005

Last week, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) tendered an offer to buy Nexen, a smaller, independent Canadian oil company for $15.1 billion. The deal has been approved by Nexen’s board, and the price premium of 61% above the previously-traded share price should be enough to win-over Nexen’s shareholders. It still must pass scrutiny from the government of Canada, and of the United Kingdom and the United States, where Nexen has many reserves.

CNOOC had attempted a takeover of the American oil company Unocal in 2005. Then, a hostile response from the public and Members of Congress forced them to pull-back. Now, however, regardless of some opposition from within the U.S. Congress, the betting is that this deal will pass muster. The opposition in Congress is mostly from the usual suspects like Senator Schumer and Congressmen Markey and Forbes, who are using this as an opportunity to push other issues they have, like market access to China for American exporters or lease rates in the Gulf of Mexico.

Motivated Reasoning

This week I was reading an article from the Associated Press called Some fracking critics use bad science. The gist of the article is that Gasland director Josh Fox used false information in his new film, The Sky is Pink. Among other things, he claimed that cancer rates were higher in Texas where fracking is taking place. Three different cancer researchers in the area contradicted him on this claim.

But then the article went on to say something that I thought was very relevant to debates on just about any controversial energy topic — fossil fuel subsidies, climate change, hydraulic fracturing:

One expert said there’s an actual psychological process at work that sometimes blinds people to science, on the fracking debate and many others. “You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them,” said Mark Lubell, the director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis.

Lubell said the situation, which happens on both sides of a debate, is called “motivated reasoning.” Rational people insist on believing things that aren’t true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views, he said.

As a result, misinformation is hard to stamp out, because it tends to be repeated — confirming the views people already hold. That brings me to the topic of today’s column: Climate change claims around the Keystone XL pipeline.CONTINUE»

Hug the Green Industry, Kill Big Oil When Barack Obama was campaigning for president, I thought he displayed a “comic book” view of the energy industry: Lots of stereotypes of the good guys and the bad guys. He would support the good guys (those who aspired to produce renewable power) and deal with the bad guys (those who were actually supplying the fuel that allowed him to campaign across the country). If he was elected president, there would be green jobs galore, and we would embark upon a major transition away from fossil fuels. He seemed to believe that our high level of dependence on fossil fuels was more due to policy reasons than economic reasons, and the country needed… Continue»